Until a few days ago television stations in Connecticut were broadcasting a commercial showing a Black woman who says she is a…
Posted: 19 April 2021 [11:37 PM] Columns
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Posted: 19 April 2021 [11:37 PM] Recent Headlines
Thursday 04/15/2021
FRIDAY FICKS: We need to push the pile in our lives today Posted: 15 April 2021 [10:43 PM] We all have piles. Piles of laundry, bills, obligations, yard work, stress, homework and anxiety. You get the idea. In normal…
Wednesday 04/14/2021
CHRIS POWELL: Eventually we'll all be paying; and young car thieves laugh Posted: 14 April 2021 [09:19 PM] Nearly everyone except government employees has suffered financial losses during the virus epidemic, and since those losses were caused more by government's…
Monday 04/12/2021
CHRIS POWELL: Where did that rape case go? And propaganda for vaccines Posted: 12 April 2021 [03:54 PM] Connecticut's Constitution, in its Declaration of Rights, commands: "All courts shall be open." So what has happened to the case of Hector…
Sunday 04/11/2021
CHRIS POWELL: Lamont probably won't mind denunciation as a moderate Posted: 11 April 2021 [11:39 AM] Many liberal Democratic officials around the country and especially in the Northeast, including Governor Lamont, are looking hypocritical for urging President Biden…
Wednesday 04/07/2021
CHRIS POWELL: Show support for the police without 'thin blue line' flag Posted: 07 April 2021 [08:51 PM] Despite the criminal prosecution underway in Minneapolis for the wrongful death of George Floyd, police officers are far more sinned against than…
Tuesday 04/06/2021
MAYOR'S CORNER: Community input key to better schools future Posted: 06 April 2021 [09:50 AM] Community input key to brighter future for public education in New Britain By Mayor Erin Stewart I was encouraged to see that…
Monday 04/05/2021
Posted: 05 April 2021 [09:14 PM] Government, journalism Made virus epidemic scarier While Governor Lamont's office has conscientiously produced detailed virus-epidemic data every weekday for a year now – a triumph of organization and persistence – his administration and news organizations have made too much of…
Thursday 04/01/2021
FRIDAY'S FICKS: Being an influencer takes a few words Posted: 01 April 2021 [09:22 PM] Being an influencer takes a few short words, actions By CARL R. FICKS, JR. Do you want to be an influencer? If…
Wednesday 03/31/2021
CHRIS POWELL: Biden's cognitive decline, Murphy's crocodile tears Posted: 31 March 2021 [03:56 PM] BIDEN'S COGNITIVE DECLINE, MURPHY'S CROCODILE TEARS By CHRIS POWELL Just as Hillary Clinton and the sleaziest elements of the Democratic Party gave…
Friday 03/26/2021
Posted: 26 March 2021 [09:05 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Political correctness and its cancel culture are starting to evoke the second great Red Scare and the tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Last week the talented young political journalist Alexi McCammond was pushed out…
Wednesday 03/24/2021
Posted: 24 March 2021 [08:05 PM] By CHRIS POWELL With as much as $4 billion in discretionary largesse about to descend on Connecticut's state and municipal governments and school systems, economizing and improving services to the public will be removed from the agenda for a long…
Monday 03/22/2021
Posted: 22 March 2021 [09:04 PM] By CHRIS POWELL What should the legislation now making another appearance in the General Assembly be called: "aid in dying" or "assisted suicide"? It depends which side you're on. "Aid in dying" makes it sound a lot nicer, just as…
Friday 03/19/2021
Posted: 19 March 2021 [09:14 PM] By CHRIS POWELL As hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants rain down on Connecticut's schools, a potentially decisive experiment in education is beginning. Bright markers should be placed on the current measures of every school system's performance and…
Thursday 03/18/2021
FRIDAY FICKS: It's about seeing the unseen Posted: 18 March 2021 [08:16 PM] The mind can play tricks, preventing you from seeing what is, or always has been, right in front of you. Comedian George…
Wednesday 03/17/2021
Posted: 17 March 2021 [10:14 PM] SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS For many years before the covid-19 pandemic, journalists “weren’t there,” to a huge extent, in terms of reporting on the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The controls keeping them…
Posted: 17 March 2021 [10:12 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Democrats in Congress, including Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, are excited about the chance of enacting a federal law to require background checks for all gun purchases and transfers. Republicans in the Senate long have…
Monday 03/15/2021
Posted: 15 March 2021 [09:39 PM] By CHRIS POWELL New Haven is clamoring at the state Capitol for a bailout, if not as big as Hartford's three years ago. But the leaders of the General Assembly's Democratic majority, including New Haven state Sen. Martin M. Looney,…
Friday 03/12/2021
Posted: 12 March 2021 [08:58 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Congratulations to one of Connecticut's forever members of Congress, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of New Haven, for teaching the country a wonderful political science lesson. Having ascended to the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, DeLauro…
Wednesday 03/10/2021
Posted: 10 March 2021 [02:14 PM] By DAVID DAVISON When I was a youngster and not outside playing ball with my friends, I used to spend time sitting at my desk at home practicing my signature, full of secret expectations that I might, as a…
Posted: 10 March 2021 [02:14 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Does Connecticut really want to be a conspirator in financial market rigging? That's the question raised by the data center development legislation just approved by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Lamont. The legislation will exempt…
Tuesday 03/09/2021
MAYOR'S COLUMN: New Britain Recovers aims to save lives Posted: 09 March 2021 [09:15 PM] The month of March signifies the end of a cold winter and the beginning of spring. We begin to get hints of…
Friday 03/05/2021
Posted: 05 March 2021 [06:23 PM] By CHRIS POWELL By a 3-2 vote, Connecticut's Commission on Compensation of Elected State Officials has recommended small raises, a bit more than 1%, for state legislators and the top state elected officials - the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general,…
Wednesday 03/03/2021
Posted: 03 March 2021 [08:50 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Legislation can't be right when its premise is wrong, and a big premise of the proposals to legalize recreational marijuana in Connecticut is wrong. That is, the proposals presume that racial minorities deserve special reparations for the…
Monday 03/01/2021
Posted: 01 March 2021 [07:08 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Nice guy that he was, Joseph D. Duffey, who died last week at age 88, was not a terribly adept politician. He was not outgoing or a glad-hander but a soft-spoken Protestant clergyman. But from 1967 to…
Friday 02/26/2021
Posted: 26 February 2021 [08:59 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Everyone is entitled to be sick and tired of the virus epidemic, and no one is more entitled than Governor Lamont, whose administration has been consumed by it. Most people were happy with the administration's handling of…
Wednesday 02/24/2021
Posted: 24 February 2021 [04:07 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Connecticut should prohibit pensions for state and municipal government employees, not because they are bad people or especially undeserving but for several solid policy reasons. First, most of the taxpayers who pay for those pensions don't enjoy…
Monday 02/22/2021
Posted: 22 February 2021 [07:50 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Does recognizing that the "war on drugs" is a failure and that people are entitled to be left alone in their personal lives require not just legalizing marijuana and taxing it heavily but also putting state government…
Friday 02/19/2021
Posted: 19 February 2021 [09:13 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Having just gotten big raises amid an economic depression with horrible unemployment in Connecticut, the state employee unions have proclaimed that they won’t consent to Governor Lamont’s budget proposal to freeze state employee salaries for a while.…
Thursday 02/18/2021
Friday Ficks: Why you need a white rabbit now Posted: 18 February 2021 [08:59 PM] One of the most iconic psychedelic rock songs is "White Rabbit," written by Grace Slick and released when she joined Jefferson Airplane…
Wednesday 02/17/2021
Posted: 17 February 2021 [09:22 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Without taking much notice, Connecticut lost a hero of journalism and justice the other day: Donald S. Connery, 94, who lived in Kent for almost 60 years even as he traveled and reported from around the world…
Friday 02/12/2021
Posted: 12 February 2021 [09:02 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Nearly everyone will forever remember some admired or even beloved teachers whose insight, enthusiasm, and caring pointed students in the right direction. Of course there were and are some mediocre, incompetent, and even malicious teachers too, but…
Wednesday 02/10/2021
MAYOR'S COLUMN: Celebrating African Americans who made a difference in our city Posted: 10 February 2021 [09:21 PM] The Mayor’s Column is back here in the New Britain Herald! I took a little break, but I am excited to use…
Posted: 10 February 2021 [09:15 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Democrats ran against Herbert Hoover for 20 years after 1932. Now they seem to be planning to run against Donald Trump for another 20. The Democrats' second attempt to impeach the former president even though he has…
Monday 02/08/2021
Posted: 08 February 2021 [09:06 PM] By CHRIS POWELL With Governor Lamont discouraging "broad-based" tax increases, many fellow Democrats in the General Assembly are planning to raise taxes around the edges. Most industrious may be Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney of New Haven. Looney…
Friday 02/05/2021
Posted: 05 February 2021 [09:14 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Maybe Connecticut should be grateful to the Desegregate CT organization for having just provided a map detailing how local zoning regulations make it almost impossible to build multifamily housing in most of the state. But didn't nearly…
Wednesday 02/03/2021
Posted: 03 February 2021 [08:56 PM] By CHRIS POWELL From the legislation they have placed before the General Assembly's Education Committee, you might think that state Reps. Jeffrey A. Currey, D-East Hartford, Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, and Nicole Klarides-Ditria, R-Seymour, just awoke from long comas. Their…
Monday 02/01/2021
Posted: 01 February 2021 [08:24 PM] By CHRIS POWELL President Biden's new education secretary, Miguel Cardona, lately Connecticut's education commissioner, says he will give priority to the issue of college loan debt. About 45 million U.S. residents, nearly 14 percent of the population, owe an estimated…
Wednesday 01/27/2021
Posted: 27 January 2021 [08:51 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Nearly everyone in Connecticut knows that its capital city, Hartford, is a mess, and that its largest city, Bridgeport, is too. Yet for saying so about Hartford in an essay in The Wall Street Journal on New…
Monday 01/25/2021
Posted: 25 January 2021 [05:14 PM] By CHRIS POWELL At least President Biden has some sense of his high office, knows how to behave in public, and unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump, is not likely to become a cosmic embarrassment on account of his demeanor. No,…
Tuesday 01/19/2021
Posted: 19 January 2021 [07:33 PM] By CHRIS POWELL As he skips the inauguration of his successor and shuffles off to his resort in Florida, has Donald Trump destroyed the Republican Party? Some political observers think so and of course Democrats hope so. Trump's petulant and…
Monday 01/18/2021
Posted: 18 January 2021 [08:46 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Last week this column examined the government pension racket in Connecticut through the example of the "retirement" of New Haven Police Chief Tony Reyes, who is only 49 and is giving up his city salary of $170,000…
Wednesday 01/13/2021
Posted: 13 January 2021 [08:49 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Everyone agrees that Tony Reyes has been a great police chief in New Haven, having been appointed in March 2019 after nearly two decades of rising through the ranks of the police department. But the city will…
Monday 01/11/2021
Posted: 11 January 2021 [04:31 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Does any state do more posturing against racism than Connecticut does only to get such meager results? A week ago West Haven's City Council joined the 19 other municipalities in the state that have declared racism a…
Wednesday 01/06/2021
Posted: 06 January 2021 [08:47 PM] By CHRIS POWELL When Bob Stefanowski was the Republican nominee for governor two years ago, he was mocked by Democrats for being light on the issues - for advocating repeal of the state income tax without specifying how to reduce…
Monday 01/04/2021
Posted: 04 January 2021 [08:55 PM] By CHRIS POWELL After a cowardly absence of nine months, the General Assembly reconvenes this week. Though legislators may not recognize it, the first question facing them is whether their new session is to be one of substance or merely…
Friday 01/01/2021
Posted: 01 January 2021 [08:52 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Employees of Connecticut's largest newspaper, the Hartford Courant, cleaned out their desks the other day as the newspaper left the building at 285 Broad St. where it had operated for 70 years. It was well reported that…
Wednesday 12/30/2020
Posted: 30 December 2020 [08:38 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Many in Connecticut, including most of its news organizations, are gushing about President-elect Joe Biden's choice of state Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona, a Meriden native, to be secretary of the U.S. Education Department. News reports say the…
Wednesday 12/23/2020
Posted: 23 December 2020 [08:53 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Frank Capra's 1946 film, "It's a Wonderful Life," to be broadcast again tonight at 8 by NBC television, is loved most for its personal message of discovery at Christmas: that its hero's life has been, unbeknownst to…
Tuesday 12/22/2020
Posted: 22 December 2020 [07:44 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Legions of the politically correct are insisting that President-elect Joe Biden's wife, Jill, be given the honorific title "Doctor" because she holds a doctorate degree in education, which she received largely on the basis of a mediocre…